The Perspective of Choice
by Banshi13
Summary: Sometimes, it's difficult to keep perspective when live forces you to choose between two lives. This story is finished; please read and review!


1Disclaimer: As much as it would please me to say that I owned Jack Harkness, I alas, do not. Nor do I own Gwen Cooper or any other character from Torchwood, or Torchwood for that matter. The story however, is mine, proudly so, and I love reviews. Flames will be supremely laughed at, and then deleted for good measure. If you have something constructive so say, I will listen with ears wide open!

Title: The Perspective of Choice

Author: Banshi13

Rating: Teen

Characters: Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper

Paring: JH/GC

**Torchwood**

_Bloody freezing outside!_ Gwen stepped through the cog door, brushing herself off of the snow and ice that had stuck it's way on her as walked from her car into the Hub. The snow was coming down heavily now in drifts, as opposed to an hour and a half ago, but it hadn't stopped Gwen from leaving her flat after having a nasty fight with Rhys. In fact, the dreary, icy, foreboding weather suited Gwen's mood quite nicely.

Once again, the fight had stemmed from her job. She been on at the Hub for almost a year ½ now, and it was the best and worst job she'd ever held. She was privy to an amazing branch of science and exploration that she never would have received had she stayed with the police force. And yet she'd seen horrors like never before and felt fear in a way she hadn't thought possible. Her life had taken on a different meaning since the night she'd met Jack Harkness and the rest of Torchwood.

"Gwen! What are you doing here?" Tosh looked up from her mainframe of communications devices and took in Gwen's appearance. "You didn't drive here through the storm, did you?"

"I did, as a matter of fact," Gwen removed her scarf and gloves, blowing on her hands to warm them up, "anything interesting going on tonight?"

Tosh shook her head. "It seems that alien life forms don't like the snow much, either. I guess they decided to stay where it's nice and warm and cause trouble when the weather gets more agreeable."

"Well, that suits me just fine," Gwen replied, "anyone else around?"

"Just Jack." Tosh's attention was diverted back to her computer screens, causing Gwen to frown a bit at what she was doing. "What are you working on?"

"Oh, I'm just trying to upload this new software into the systems. The hard drive is having a bit of trouble accepting it because it's so large, so I'm trying to create a new code for the soft ware to latch onto." Tosh's hands flew across the keyboard. "This new program will give us a range we haven't had before on our communications devices, as well as hack into any camera's that are monitoring the city and it's surrounding area's."

"Ah." The other woman raised her eyebrows, grateful at the new abilities Tosh was providing them, but content to not understand exactly how it was being done.

"Jack's in his office if you wanted him."

Gwen nodded her thanks and headed off, walking the now familiar pathways that led to Captain Jack Harkness's personal office and sometimes, Gwen suspected, his sleeping quarters as well. She didn't know him to have a flat or to be looking for one either, and never saw him sleep anywhere but at the Hub. Come to think of it, she'd never seen him sleep. Seeing his feet propped up on his desk, his heavy long tail coat cast over the back of a chair, Gwen tapped her knuckles delicately on the door pane.

"Want some company?"

Jack didn't bother to turn around and visibly acknowledge her, but he waved a hand in the air, indicating that the proposition was fine by him. "I thought you'd gone home," he stated, as he found himself so often saying these days. He didn't lower his book as he watched her walk in from his peripheral vision.

"I did."

"You came back."

"I did."

"In this storm?" Jack watched Gwen carefully as she walked in front of the desk and plunked herself down in the chair where his over coat lay. She simply nodded as she crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap. Lately, this was how they'd been starting out their conversations. She'd leave for the night, or so she thought, then would some how wind back up at the hub, sleep there through the night, and get up to do it all over again the next day. Jack wondered why she left at all.

He regarded her carefully while she looked around the room, plucking at her sweater. So, she wanted to talk to him, but he'd have to pry it out of her, that was the game. Well, that was no problem. Jack enjoyed talking to Gwen about anything that was on her mind; each time he did, he got an inside glimpse of her that he suspected few people were able to see. He lowered his book onto his lap and smiled. "Did we have another argument with the mister?" He only smiled wider when she rolled her eyes. He knew she hated it when he made things so simply casual, especially when it involved Rhys.

"So, what was it about this time? The job, the hours, the secrecy?" Jack snapped his book closed and flipped his feet off the desk, leaning forward to steeple his fingers together and watch Gwen with a kind of seriousness that most people forgot Jack had.

"No, actually," Gwen murmured, then caught his eyes and sighed, "well, yes, all three, and now there's a fourth quality about the job that Rhys had to dislike."

"Which is?"

"You."

"Me?" The captain leaned back against his chair, spreading his arms wide, "what's not to like about me? I'm fun, I'm reasonable, I'd like to think I'm a good boss most of the time..." warmth spread inside his chest like butter on bread when he was able to make her grin. But as slowly as it came was as quickly as it faded away, replaced by a sad, contemplative, thin lined mouth that Jack found himself staring at more and more.

"He thinks the reason I spend so much time here is not because of the job, but because of you." Gwen eyed him carefully. She'd only known Jack for a year or so, but she knew that if she wanted to catch any glimpse of what he was really thinking in that head of his, she had to watch his face closely for any sign of the proverbial 'walls' being put up.

"Well," Jack relaxed back into his chair, not quite meeting her eyes, "in a way that's right. I ask a lot of you, but you all have lives outside of the Hub. If you'll recall, I usually have to push you back to it." He heard her utter a small laugh as she nodded her head, losing her battle with looking at his face and deciding to direct her light green eyes to her hands, specifically the ring finger of the left hand. She was fiddling with the small diamond ring there, twisting her lips in thought. The normally cool, calm, and collected captain arched an eyebrow when she slid the ring off her finger and examined it in the light.

"When he proposed, I was so happy. I thought we'd put everything about this job behind us. I really believed he understood, that he could live with it; me being out in the field almost every day, getting chased around God knows where by God knows who..." she chuckled and added, "or what." She swallowed, noticing that Jack was watching her with a fascination that sent chills down her spine. Quickly, she fisted the ring and clutched it close to her chest, not quite near her heart and sank down in the chair a bit.

"Gwen," Jack chanced, folding his own hands over his stomach, "why did you accept Rhys's proposal?"

"Because I love him," she automatically answered, in the same way she always did; mechanically, dutifully.

"Okaaay, let me ask you this," Jack cleared his throat, "Gwen, why did you accept Rhys's proposal?"

"Jack, you already asked that."

"Yea, but I didn't get the correct answer the first time," he looked at her pointedly, "so, I asked again."

"Are you calling me a liar, Captain?" Gwen's eyes flashed the tell tale signs of indignation and disbelief that anyone would dare question her motives. Jack held up a finger quickly. "No, let me make very clear here and now that I am not calling you a liar, except...well, yes, yes, I am, I'm calling you a liar."

"You don't think that I love Rhys?" She jumped to her feet, her small frame seeming to tower of Jack's when she was angry. For his part, Jack remained relaxed and laid back in his chair. "I think you love Rhys," he conceded, "but I don't think you're _in_ love with him, at least, not anymore."

"And whose fault would that be?" Gwen spoke before thinking, then pursed her lips shut and looked away. She shoved her closed fist in the pocket of her jeans and dropped the ring there safely before bringing her hands to rub the back of her neck tiredly. She looked back at Harkness and to her utter annoyance, he had the slightest beginnings of a smirk on his features.

God, she hated that!

"It's not about fault, Gwen. You love Rhys, but not the same way you did, there's no shame or blame in that. It simply is. You had a whole new life thrust on you in the span of 48 hours, and you loved it, you love the people you work with and by the way, we love you too...," he wiggled his eyebrows at her, a gesture which she did not find amusing at all, "do you blame yourself for those feelings too?"

She shook her head.

"Then why blame yourself for falling out of love with Rhys? That doesn't make much sense, does it?"

"I never said I fell out of love with him!"

"Didn't you?" Jack stood up and walked around his desk, leaning against it and folding his arms over his chest. He noticed that Gwen self consciously took a step back from him. "Wasn't that what your question regarding fault was about?"

Gwen bit her lip. She couldn't respond to that, not without incriminating herself. She gently fingered the ring in her pocket through the cloth, looking down at the floor. If she wasn't in love with Rhys, why had she taken the ring off? Why did she continuously come back to the Hub when they fought? Why did she or Rhys always leave after a fight; they were fighting so much.

Why did she always seek out Jack to help her answer the questions that swirled in her mind?

Gwen Elizabeth Cooper had never felt so guilty and dirty in all her life. She'd fooled herself is what she did; fooled herself into believing that things with Rhys could be the same when she was a constable on the police force, fooled herself into thinking she still wanted the life Rhys had always promised her after she'd joined up with Torchwood...possibly the worst thing was that the love she'd once held for Rhys had become a kind of guilt factor for her. Rhys had put up with so much in this year and a half; her missing dinner dates, not coming home, the lies about where she was and whom she was with and what she was doing for a living...

She felt she owed it to him to give him the happiness he'd always said he wanted. He wanted that perfect married life with her; that was what would make him happy. For everything she'd put him through since she'd started at Torchwood, Gwen felt he deserved that from her.

She closed her eyes and sighed, rubbing her head.

"Gwen?" Jack regarded her cautiously. Gwen had never been shy about getting physical with him when she wasn't in the best of moods, and though he was much stronger than she, he didn't relish the thought of being pushed over the desk or slapped in the face much. He grinned when he could see her eyes peak through the fingers of her hand.

"I wanted to make him happy," she replied, shaking her head, "I've put him through Hell since I've worked here. I've lied to him, cheated on him...broken every sacred rule a couple is supposed to follow..." she wiped her eyes cautiously, ignoring the tissue Jack offered her. "But the truth is...this job changed me, changed who I am, who I thought I was." She tried swallowing the lump in her throat, but found it to big to destroy it completely. She hated crying, but by this point, after all the fights and the battling within herself, she didn't care if she cried or who she wept in front of. She was tired, exhausted with the double life she'd been leading.

She had to choose one.

"Then choose," Jack replied, and Gwen realized she'd spoken that last thought allowed. She felt firm, strong finger tips reach under her chin and raise her face up, and within a moment she found herself looking into the eyes that had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

"I seem to remember you saying, when you announced your engagement, that no one else would have you, and I took that to be the reason you'd said yes," Jack stated, using his thumb to gently and chivalrously wipe away the tears that trekked down her rosy, slightly chilled cheek, " I didn't say anything, because at the time, I couldn't."

"Jack-"

"No," Jack soothed a thumb over her mouth, effectively silencing her, "I'm not saying I'd have asked for you. I wouldn't have. But I've watched you ever since I came back, and I see you hiding tears after texts from Rhys and coming back to work when you're supposed to be at home, having dinner with your fiancé, and I wonder to myself...have you lost perspective?"

"No," she sniffed, shaking her head, "I haven't lost perspective, Jack."

"Are you sure?"

Gwen shook her head and looked away for a moment, before deciding to plunge ahead with her comment. "Even when you told me to keep perspective and not lose sight of reality, you came after me!" She stepped back from him, leaving his thumb hanging in midair, and she could tell by the look on his face that he was preparing for a blazing verbal assault. "When that-when that creature went running through the street while Rhys and I were having dinner, you didn't have to come over to me and retrieve me! You were more than capable of catching it on your own, along with the rest of team!"

"You didn't have to follow me either," Jack reminded her evenly, "you could have sat back down and gone back to your spaghetti-"

"Lasagna"

"-whatever, that you were eating, and I would have been fine with that."

"You honestly believe that you could run up to me, tell me that there's some kind of creature running around Cardiff, and expect that I would sit on my bum with my boyfriend and say, "to bad, so sad?'" Gwen's normally beautiful features were twisted in a mixture of anger and disbelief. "Who in _God's_ name would do that?"

"I would!"

"You would? Really?" Gwen turned back and stalked toward him, her facing ending just inches from his own. "If one of us were chasing a dangerous monster in the streets, or vice versa, you would just continue to have dinner with whomever and go on your merry way?!" Jack faltered, only slightly, just for a moment, a millisecond, but it was long enough for Gwen to catch it, and the fire in her eyes died down, but only slightly. "Of course you wouldn't. You have a million lives, Jack, and you'd give all of them up to keep anyone else from harm."

The captain didn't have much to say to that, so he brought the subject back to the issue at hand. "So, what are you going to do?" Jack's finger brushed the side of the pocket where the ring was stored, and Gwen's hand covered his own. She shook her head. "I haven't been fair to Rhys," she sighed, "even now, I find myself lying to him, about where I am, who I'm with, what I'm doing...and I'm not _meaning_ to, I just _do_!"

They stood quietly for a few minutes, neither one hardly breathing or saying a word for that matter. The silence was deafening in Jack's office, and his hand was still wrapped lightly in Gwen's, both of their fingers touching on the ring separated by cloth that had once been Gwen's future.

It was the sound of a vibrating mobile phone that broke the tension. After a few moments of buzzing, Gwen reached into her back pocket and pulled out her mobile. Jack could tell that she was reading something, a text, probably from Rhys, and remained quiet while she took in what the other person had wrote. The tight smile confirmed his suspicion. He simply raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to speak.

"Well, that's that then," she murmured, the phone still in her hands.

"Rhys?"

Gwen gave a bitter laugh. "Yes, um...yes, well..." she shrugged, tears brimming once again. She tried to tell Jack what had been sent, but she couldn't find the muscles to work her lips, nor a voice with which to speak. But Jack didn't lack common sense, and he was there soothing her, wrapping strong, steady arms around a sad frame of a body. He didn't tell her it was going to be alright or that everything would work out; Jack didn't believe in silly advice such as that. He merely held her, and told her what he absolutely knew to be the truth.

"I'll help you through this."

He felt her nod her head against his chest, and he smiled into her dark hair, pressing a kiss to her forehead. The phone was still in her hand, her arm still raised as though she were reading it. It was like she was frozen in that moment in time when she'd received the text and hadn't been able to step out of it yet. He gently slid his hand up her arm until the phone was in his hand and placed it on the table.

Neither of them knew how long they stood there, Jack holding Gwen, and Gwen clinging to him, pouring out her grief, but when her sobs subsided, Jack held her at arms length and looked her over. Though her eyes were slightly puffy, and tear treads marked her rosy cheeks, she still had an air of fragile beauty about her that Jack hadn't seen in anyone for a remarkably long time. "I must look a mess," she grumbled, wiping her face of the water while trying to keep what little mascara there was left on her eye lashes.

Jack bade her to wait for a bit and he left the room, coming back a few minutes later with a soft, wet towel. "Look up," he suggested to her, and she did so, marveling at the fact that Captain Jack Harkness was wiping the mascara off her cheeks and evening it out just under her eyes. "Are you a make up artist now too?" She joked dryly.

"Nah, had an old boyfriend who liked the drag scene, except he was a really depressed guy and...well, I ended up cleaning his face from the make up while still trying to keep in tact," Jack worked slowly and carefully for a few more minutes, "that relationship ended pretty quickly."

"Seems that most of your relationships end pretty quickly."

"Yea, well," he shrugged, finished with the towel and tossing it aside, "there have been a few that have held my attention for...well, for a long time."

"Ianto?" she inquired.

"He's one of them," Jack smiled down at her, not giving her any more information than that. "He's been loyal, loving, forgiven me for things I know others wouldn't, and completely unselfish where as I...well," he smirked, tossing Gwen a knowing look, "I'm not the most patient of lovers."

"So," he clapped his hands together, "what is Gwen Cooper going to do, now that she's single? Maybe go out for a night on the town?"

"In this weather?" Gwen snorted. "Hardly."

"Going to go back to your flat?"

Gwen shook her head. "No. Rhys is still there, though he mentioned he'd begin moving his things out tomorrow. I'll just stay here for tonight, sleep on the couch; it's like my second bed anyway."

"Well..." Jack slid off the desk to stand straight and looked at her, "instead of sleeping on a hard, dusty old couch, why don't you sleep with me?" He hadn't thought about what he'd said until he saw Gwens eyes at their greenest and chuckled. "No, no, no, not _sleep with me_! I meant, sleep in my bed."

"Aren't you going to use it?" she asked. Jack shook his head. "I don't sleep, remember?"

"Ah, yes." Gwen pursed her lips together, indecision settling in. How appropriate was it for her to find peace in another mans bed tonight, whether or not he'd be sleeping beside her?

_I don't know Gwen; how appropriate was it to cheat on Rhys with Owen?_

Jack held his hand out to her, meeting her eyes with his own sky blue ones. "I'll be a perfect gentleman," he vowed, the indecisiveness tugging at his heart strings. Yes, Jack Harkness did have a heart, and right now, it was hurting for Gwen. It soared however, when Gwen's small hand fit perfectly in his larger one and he closed his fingers around it, leading her through the Hub to his small, private room where he would go to think, contemplate the days events, generally just be by himself. It was bare, with a rug, and one large sized bed in the middle of the space.

"I come here to be alone," he explained as she looked around, "it's pretty simple; I don't come here much, but..." he shrugged, leading her over to the plush bed and nodding his head in indication that she should lay down. When she'd gotten herself comfortable, he slipped his shoes off and climbed in beside her, wrapping his arms around her middle and holding her to him, his chest to her back. Once more, he softly kissed the back of her head and whispered, "go to sleep, Gwen Cooper."

For once, he received no argument or fight from her, just felt her body relax as much as it could in this trying emotional time. Her head fell against his chest and he brushed some of the stray strands of brunette out of her face and eyes. "Thank you, Jack," he heard her say, and he smiled. "No need to thank me; I didn't think you'd enjoy sleeping with hair in your face."

He could feel her smile as she shook her head. "No, thank you for...well, I'm not sure...thank you for doing this, for being here for me."

"Always," he murmured, tightening his hold on her in a hug, "now, go to sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."

He laid there with her, holding her, until he felt her breathing even out into slow, deep breaths, but even when he was sure she was asleep, Jack didn't leave Gwen's side. Instead, he contemplated the woman that lay beside him. It had been a long time since someone had captivated him the way she had. He marveled at the morality and passion she had within her, her dedication to her work, her perspective on life. He hadn't seen anyone like her in such a long time. He twirled a lock of her hair around his finger.

**Flashback**

"_What's this?" Jack took her left hand and held it up to see an engagement ring sitting on her ring finger._

"_Oh that? That's an engagement ring, that is," Gwen made a uniquely funny face and looked at him. "Rhys asked me, while you were away."_

"_Wow, Gwen Cooper getting married!" He glanced at her. "Down on one knee?"_

"_Well, he tried to, but then he got a twinge in his back and had to lie on the sitting, and that's when he popped the question." She had an indignant expression on her face, but Jack couldn't help but ask, "and you said 'yes?'"_

"_Well, no one else would have me." She looked at him expectantly, but he couldn't say anything to that. So, Jack did the only thing he knew to do when a friend told him he or she was getting married. He kissed her on the cheek. "Congratulations."_

**End Flashback**

He closed his eyes, his head falling back against the pillows. He couldn't deny that he cared about her; he couldn't deny that he loved her either. But he also couldn't deny the heart ache he knew he'd put her through. Gwen deserved better than what Jack could give her, and he knew it. He wouldn't ever be ready to settle down, to get married. He would literally live _forever_. As he looked down on her, an angel enjoying her slumber, he traced her jaw line with his thumb.

_But maybe I could settle down just long enough; for you. _


End file.
